General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra has announced a $5 billion initiative to work with Chinese partner SAIC Motor Corp. to develop smaller cars for emerging markets. This is her first major announcement regarding GM's strategy in China, so we should pause for a moment to reflect on the nature of the game being played.

Remember when it was cool to make a 3D printed keychain? Well, those days are gone. 3D manufacturing has achieved a major shift in its lifecycle: it is now scalable.This means that companies large and small are going beyond simple prototyping and are now using 3D for complete production runs.

➡ BEGIN BY FORGING AN INTERNAL CONSENSUS among key constituencies in your company about what you are trying to achieve. One key question is how much of your system can be offsite in the cloud versus on-premises. You don’t want to change technical specifications after you launch. That can lead to cost overruns and delays, known as ERP “bloat.” ➡ ...

Guy Halfteck, a former commander in the Israeli navy who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in game theory, had always been intrigued by what he saw as a core problem facing companies: how do you identify the best people to hire? He created Knack to help companies do just that.

Music Mastermind couldn’t exist without cloud computing. The company’s core product is Zya, a free music application and game that allows customers—mostly in the 13- to 24-year age range—to download clips from their favorite songs and add their own voices in what they call a “mash-up.”